Who is the biggest enemy of on-line privacy in Ireland

Michael McDowell

He is deffinitly one of the greatest treats to Irish Civil Liberties.
Followed closely by the Gardai.... The Public Order Offenses Bill 2000 is total Anti-Liberty. It really just gives the gardai a free hand when ever they want.
i.e. May Day
i.e. One case where a man was arrested for whistling at a bus stop which annoyed follow by standers... ffs ???

Yes you may blame George Bush and in many ways American pressure is provoking the Irish response from Minister McDowell.

The thing is, this is a soverign State at least in theory and in a soverign State the President of the United States does not call the shots.

I accept the Americans can put enormous pressure on the Irish to hold information on Irish citizens et-al, but I don't think that, that fact absolves the Irish government of it's responsibility in actually instigating and enforcing that legislation.

That'd be my take anyway.

Who's to say it's 'not' already like that here?

The existance of counter-intelligence agencies in Ireland is one of the best kept secrets in the world, by virute of the fact that very few people are actually aware the State engages in such activities in the name of the Irish people.

Nominally people in the Department of Foreign affairs are 'asked' to spy on other countries on occasion, though quite what the Irish government's position is on people who 'spy' and get caught is unclear.

Since the time of Michael Collins the Irish have engaged in countering British intelligence gathering operations and have engaged in their own intelligence gathering.

My point being that, while Ireland may try to come off all nice and squeaky clean vis-a-vis Big Brother snooping, the fact is, that entities within this State have been engaged in the intelligence world since before the inception of the Free State and in all likelyhood never stopped once that State was created.

This legislation proposed by Minister McDowell simply gives another more public layer to intelligence gathering in Ireland, it is showmanship, because if one takes the evidence of Ireland's past, it is wholely unlikely that Ireland has never before snooped in an extraneous manner where such snooping was 'in the national interest'.

Who's to say it's 'not' already like that here?

I understand your point entirely, but the real focus of my point is not these people. I'm referring the possibility of engendering a culture where any average Detective Seargent can walk into a business and make them actually consider handing my information over un-challanged.

Well if anyone decides to implement that crazy American plan of chipping the entire populace so that they can all be tracked via GPS.

In which case I swear to kill the entire Dáil. With my bare bleeding recently chipped hands.

Originally posted by leeroybrown


I don't, for example, want private data relating to me, whether it be internet, banking, telephone, etc, to be made available on a whim to supposedly good parties. When I dial up I know I can be traced but when I use my Credit or Laser card or make a phone call, I'd like to know that the company involved is treating my individual data with security and privacy.

This is a good point.

Absolute power, corrupts absolutely. The more power that is centrally localised in the hands of the judges, the Gardaí or whoever, the more potential there is for those people to abuse that power.

Not meaning to sound paranoid, but, the notion that Gardaí are above reproach is nonsense, what's more the investigation of Gardaí is still sub standard and not transparent enough in this country. The point being that when you have bodies or groups of people who are supposed to be responsible in wielding the axe, you invariably get those who are not, one comes across such people in all walks of life.

So retaining data on individuals who have not in fact comitted any crime, without going into the issues surrounding treating the innocent as if guilty, gives the potential for abusive of power positions, yet another tool by which such abuse may be accomplished.

Real world, as group (x) has the ability to commit some form of power abuse, 'someone' from that group will. So while lots/many/some of the Gardaí may be trustworthy with access to personal data, 'some' will abuse that ability outright and some will be overly intrusive, without actually abusing their position of power.

For me, I wonder, in what circumstances data held pertaining to me by the State might be queried. Could a Garda investigating, car tax, for example, actually obtain information on who you have been emailing, and more to the point, why would a Garda 'need' to do so? Technically if the procedure is followed, the information in question could be requisitioned for 'any' purpose, not simply for 'terrorist' threats.

In short, I think Irish people's complacency vis-a-vis this issue is the biggest threat to on-line privacy, if only more people would get up in arms about it, the potential for uncomfortable or unnecessary information being stored about Citizen (x) diminishes by an order of magnitude, because of the glare of public scrutiny.